Human rights and Canada: view from Washington

Canada continues to get an implicit 'pass' on its restrictions on freedom of speech. The wide-ranging latitude of provincial human rights commissions to charge individuals and publications with 'hate speech' and force defendants into expensive legal defe

WASHINGTON, D.C.—For 34 years the release of the annual U.S. Department of State human rights report has been a harbinger of spring competing with blooming crocus, returning robins, and the office lottery pools associated with “March madness” basketball. As a bureaucratic legacy of the Carter presidency, each successor administration has handled the Congressional imperative to produce the document with different levels of enthusiasm and different points of focus.

Unless Trudeau plans to be out on these streets, fighting against police brutality or in cabinet drafting legislation to curb police powers, his, and all the other white voices of his ilk, have no merit here.

'I do agree that things need to be implemented as quickly as possible. We could've done this a lot sooner. The good news is that we’re doing it now and announcing it today,' says Transport Minister Marc Garneau.